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19 May 2009 : Column 1312W—continued
warrants to authorise bailiff action issued in respect of (a) council tax, (b) magistrates court fines, (c) consumer credit debts, (d) parking penalties and congestion charges, (e) child support and maintenance, (f) television licences and (g) other matters.
The administrative computer systems used in the county courts do not enable easy identification of whether cases are brought specifically by local authorities, of the specific case type listed. All relevant cases are logged on the system and the claimant name is recorded. However, the statistics requested could only be derived following extensive manual searching of individual case records, which would incur disproportionate cost.
In addition, the numbers of orders made in magistrates courts are not held centrally.
Legal Aid
Mr. Vara: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent on legal aid in (a) North West Cambridgeshire, (b) Cambridgeshire, (c) the East of England and (d) England and Wales in each of the last 10 years. [275920]
Mr. Hanson: The Legal Services Commission (LSC) does not record legal aid expenditure in such as way as to readily ascribe it to (a) North West Cambridgeshire or (b) Cambridgeshire. Obtaining this information would require a manual extraction of data, which would incur disproportionate cost.
Legal aid expenditure, in cash terms, for each of the past 10 years in (d) England and Wales is given in the following table. Expenditure for (c) the East of England region is available only from 2001-02 as obtaining this information for earlier years would require a manual extraction of data, which would incur disproportionate cost. Expenditure has been attributed on the basis of the location of the court in which proceedings were conducted for some legal aid schemes and the location of the service provider for others. Small elements of expenditure, for example, CDS Direct, have been excluded as they cannot easily be allocated to specific regions.
| £ million | ||
| East of England | England and Wales | |
| n/a = Not available. | ||
Lindholme Prison
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prisoners he expects to be released early from HM Prison Lindholme in the next six months. [275534]
Mr. Straw: The number discharged from prison are dependent on a variety of factors, including the profile of the prison population in each establishment, the specifics of legislation or policies pertaining at the time, those received into the prison, movements between prisons and in the case of Lindholme the practicalities of removing foreign national prisoners to their home countries. No assessment has therefore been made on the number of releases, early or otherwise, from any specific prison.
Estimates of the prison population as a whole are generally published annually. This gives the projected monthly prison population in England and Wales for the next seven years. Sub-population (such as gender) estimates are presented alongside the effects of legislation, sentencing activity, and other factors relevant to the prison population. The relevant page on the Ministry of Justice website is:
Members: Correspondence
Jeremy Wright: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice when the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) plans to reply to the letter from the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth of 18 March 2009, on Clifton Court Nursing Home. [276278]
Mr. Hanson: I am sorry for the delay. A reply has been sent and the hon. Member should receive it shortly.
Prisoners’ Discharge Grants
Mr. Grieve: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much on average prisoners received in a discharge grant in 2008. [275554]
Mr. Straw: Prison Service Order (PSO) 6400 (Discharge) states that all eligible prisoners aged 18 or over sentenced to a custodial sentence of more than 14 days must be given a discharge grant of £46 on release. Prisoners released from custody will not receive any benefits immediately and the grant is intended to meet their immediate basic needs.
Prisoners in the following categories are not eligible for a discharge grant:
Sentenced prisoners who are known to have in excess of £8,000 in savings (and would therefore be ineligible for income support under the relevant regulations);
Unconvicted prisoners;
Those serving a custodial sentence of 14 days or less;
Those recalled from licence to prison for a period of 14 days or less;
Those awaiting deportation or removal from the United Kingdom;
Those travelling to an address outside the United Kingdom. For the purpose of paying the discharge grant, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland are included within the United Kingdom;
Those being discharged to a hospital under a Mental Health Act Section Order;
Fine defaulters and those held on further remand warrants.
Prisons: Barking and Dagenham
Jon Cruddas: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) what area of land is required to build the proposed prison on the Beam Park West site; [275075]
(2) what proportion of the London Development Agency's Beam Park West site is required to be secured in order to build the prison he proposes. [275118]
Mr. Straw: Our intention is to purchase the entire Beam Park West site. A minimum of 35 acres is required for a 1,500 place prison.
Prisons: Location
Jon Cruddas: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the written ministerial statement of 27 April 2009, Official Report, columns 569-71, on prisons and probation, what factors he took into account in deciding on sites for the new prisons. [275826]
Mr. Straw: Criteria including size, location, shape and topography of sites as well as public and private transport and planning polices were taken into account during the site search.
Young Offenders
Chris Huhne: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many inmates of each age group there were in each young offender institution in each year since 1997. [272025]
Mr. Hanson: Available information provided in the following table shows the number of 15-17 year olds and young adults under sentence in prison establishments in England and Wales as at the end of June 2002 to June 2007 (latest available).
Young adults are those aged 18-20 and those 21-year-olds who were aged 20 or under at conviction who have not been reclassified as part of the adult population.
It is not possible to provide information from 1997 without incurring disproportionate cost.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
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